Medical negligence

Brain or spinal injuries can be caused, or contributed to, by the negligence of a doctor or nurse or other member of hospital staff. If that is the case you may be able to bring a claim for compensation because of medical or clinical negligence.

Medical negligence can be as a result of a medical professional doing the wrong thing, or not doing what he or she should have done. Sometimes a doctor’s actions can cause a brain or spinal injury when otherwise one would not have occurred, for example, by depriving a patient or unborn child of oxygen, or by failing to diagnose soon enough the cause of a patient’s symptoms, for example a stroke or pending haemorrhage, or because of negligent spinal surgery or the failure to recognise the symptoms of, for example, cauda equina syndrome. In other cases a patient may require head surgery which carries risk, but something goes wrong causing damage that would not have occurred if the surgery had been performed competently.

Not all injuries suffered in hospital or as a result of a medical condition are caused by negligence. One of the difficulties of medical negligence claims is that in the vast majority of cases the person injured already had something wrong with them which is why they needed medical treatment and there is a question as to whether that condition or illness led to brain damage rather than what the doctors did or did not do. Sadly, some neurological conditions are progressive and cannot be treated and cause injuries that cannot be prevented. However, if you think you may have suffered a brain or spinal cord injury as a result of poor medical care then we can investigate a potential claim for you.

You do not have to know for sure that your care was negligent. Medical negligence claims are not like road traffic claims, when often it is clear who was at fault and how. Another difficulty with medical negligence claims relating to brain injury in that is usually impossible to know what caused a brain injury at the outset. That is why we talk about investigating a case for you. Maybe you were reporting your symptoms to your GP or doctor for weeks or months before and no one took you seriously? Maybe you attended A&E with very unusual symptoms but they sent you home without treatment? Maybe you underwent surgery and afterwards had an unexpected spinal injury of which you were not warned beforehand? If so, and you want to find out what happened, then we can help you.